Authoritarian governments have learned from the Arab Spring that the best way to nip revolution in the bud is to exploit the new technologies

For a moment at the Oslo Freedom Forum, it was possible to believe that Pyotr Verzilov was the coolest guy on the planet. Breathless and unshaven, the young performance artist arrived in Norway from the street protests in Moscow. With the élan of an exultant radical, he explained the personal and political reasons for taking on Putin’s kleptocracy.

He had been lucky enough to persuade a member of Pussy Riot to be his wife. The celebrated feminist collective had been outraged when Patriarch Kirill continued the Russian Orthodox Church’s subservience to whatever autocrat occupied the Kremlin by announcing that Putin’s leadership had been a “miracle of God”, and adding for good measure that the regime’s opponents were a degenerate minority in love with western culture.

Pussy Riot responded with a “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The protest was not the offence to delicate religious sensibilities it seems on the web, Verzilov explained. The women danced for about a minute in their balaclavas and fluorescent tights before security guards told them to leave. They added the screaming soundtrack to “Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin, Chase Putin Out” later. For this impromptu stunt, the FSB jailed his wife, and threatened her with a seven-year sentence, even though she was pregnant.

They would not win, said Verzilov with indomitable confidence. As soon as the conference was over, he would return to Russia to take part in a revolution that would free his wife and unborn child. All the other Russians on the stage agreed that regime change was coming – even Garry Kasparov, who is hardly an adolescent hothead.

It was easy to feel that way in Norway. The Oslo Freedom Forum is a Davos for revolutionaries. Activists who have overthrown dictatorships meet activists who want to overthrow dictatorships. Even if they need translators, everyone speaks the same language. They agree on the radical potential of the new technologies. The magnificent Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy said that when Mubarak’s interior ministry police beat and sexually abused her, she knew her first task was to get to her mobile and tweet that she needed help to her 133,000 followers. Help came.

The audience was not surprised. It took for granted the ability of the web to mobilise support – a power that would have been incredible even five years ago. They agreed on tactics – non-violent civil disobedience. They had a common programme – secular democracy, the rule of law and human rights. And they agreed that they should look west for support. Not necessarily to western governments. But to the west of the human rights movements, George Soros, activist charities, concerned journalists and academics: Europe and North America’s network of altruists. The camaraderie generated the exultant feeling that a new world was not only possible, but inevitable.

Thor Halvorssen, founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, exemplifies the best the west can offer, but he is a realist with no time for light-headed optimism. He pointed me to statistics from the human rights monitoring group Freedom House. Despite globalisation, “Twitter revolutions” and the Arab Spring, the numbers living under oppressive regimes have not shifted in a decade. Freedom House defined 86 of the 192 countries in the world in 2000 as “free”; 58 as partially free – authoritarian states with some liberties but restrictions on full democratic participation; and 48 as straight “unfree” dictatorships. In 2010, 87 of the by then 194 countries were free, 60 partially free and 47 unfree.

Technological and economic changes are strengthening the ability of autocrats to dominate. Authoritarian men have learned the lessons of the Arab Spring well. They are exploiting the sinister potential of the new technologies to ensure that the net-literate activists never surprise them again. Western companies are eager to oblige them. A recent documentary on Swedish television exposed double standards in the Nordic telecoms giant TeliaSonera. Its executives in Stockholm have a fine line in progressive babble. They talk about their commitment to democracy and respect for the privacy rights of their customers, while giving the security services of Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Uzbekistan unrestricted access to the phone system previous generations of secret policemen could only have dreamed of.

A young member of the Belarusian opposition, Franak Viacorka, told me how the state’s new powers disorientate and demoralise. After hiding with friends in the Minsk underground for 10 days he made the mistake of alerting the KGB to his presence by turning on his mobile. When they tracked down the signal and hauled him in, the interrogator showed him copies of all his texts to parents, friends and political allies. The intercepted messages filled 20 sheets. “These are moments you want to cry,” he said. “You feel undefended. Very weak. It looks like Sweden helps the regime to suppress, to isolate and control the opposition. Europe does not live by its principles. Business interests come first.”

The traditional response of human rights activists has been to force the west to behave with at least a minimum of morality. I worry they will not win their arguments in a recession. We are living through a crisis in western economies as far-reaching as any since the 1930s – and historians among you will know that liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness did not flourish in that “low dishonest decade”. The British and American banking systems have collapsed. America has a feeble recovery but Britain’s leaders have no idea how to repair the damage. Meanwhile, the eurozone has become a machine for wealth destruction, which Europe’s politicians cannot turn off. Those who want governments to put human rights before jobs or spend blood and treasure on humanitarian interventions are going to have an even harder time of it than before.

The economic crisis is also a crisis of political legitimacy. It may be vulgar to say so, but in the late 20th century, many wanted to be free because they wanted to be rich. Last week a global survey by the BBC World Service showed how the crash of the west had shifted attitudes. Respect for democratic EU countries had gone down and admiration for authoritarian China gone up. The post-2008 lesson appears to be that repression works. It makes money. It is good for business. Who are liberals from declining countries to lecture others?

I am not arguing that we should stop lecturing. Quite the reverse. Simply that we should not fool ourselves. It has always been hard to win a change worth having, and it will soon get harder.